[February 07, 2014]WASHINGTON (Reuters) — Vice
President Joe Biden said he will decide by the summer of 2015 if he will
make a third run for the U.S. presidency.

"There may be reasons I don't run but there's no obvious reason
for me why I think I should not run," Biden said in an interview
aired on Friday on CNN's "New Day" program.

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is the early front-runner
for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016, with a 61
percentage point lead over Biden in a Washington Post-ABC News poll
last month. Clinton has not announced if she will run.

Biden, 71, who represented Delaware in the Senate for 36 years
before becoming vice president in 2009, first sought the Democratic
nomination in 1988 but left the race amid accusations he plagiarized
a speech by a British parliamentarian.

He ran again in 2008 but dropped out in January of that year and
took the No. 2 spot on the ticket with eventual winner Barack Obama.

Asked in the CNN interview when he would made a decision on a 2016
campaign, Biden said, "Realistically, a year this summer."

"For me, the decision to run or not run is going to be determined by
me as to whether I am the best qualified person to focus on the two
things I've spent my whole life on — giving ordinary people a
fighting chance to make it and a sound foreign policy that's based
on rational interests of the United States," he said.